What Welcomes Me Still
by hungrytiger11
Summary: Funny. He's never had to kill before. Nejihina.


Title: What Welcomes Me Still

Author: hungrytiger11

Summary: Funny. He's never had to kill before. Nejihina.

Notes: Written as a gift!fic for inner_poise_yo in response to a request for characters dealing emotionally with killing and for Nejihina. Hope you like it!Also, if you are looking for good nejihina and haven't checked out her stuff; go forth and read her (well, after reading this. lol).

* * *

His heart is pounding when he does it. It doesn't even take skill or grace, just a downward arcing turn of his hand. The kunai meets resistance but that's okay.

Hinata's eyes are wide when she's looking at him, the slumping body in his arms between him and her. Her lips are moving but there's no sound, just the blood in the veins by his eardrums, drowning everything else.

Funny. He's never had to kill before.

They prepare you for it. Seasoned shinobi come in as special speakers to talk to four year olds about what he's doing now, which is dropping the weapon. You don't want to do that after you kill somebody, is what they say. There could be more people you need to kill. Stumbling fingers work at grasping it back to his hand, and it doesn't work. He tries again.

Again.

Huh. That's funny too. He goes to try a fourth time when a hand grips his shoulder.

"Nii-san?" That's what she's saying. She's asking if he's all right. The pads of her fingers travel down his shoulder and then his arm, barely touching him at all. She could be smoothing the cloth as much as anything, such a simple thing. But the fingers glide right down and over his wrist, across his fingers and further still to the kunai he's just dropped. She picks it up and plays nervously with it in her hands.

"I-I t-think that m-man was our contact," she says.

Shit.

There's a body on the ground, he realizes. _Of course_, Neji thinks_, you just killed him._ _Of course there's a body on ground._ He's wondering what to do with it, when Hinata repeats herself. This time the words sound less like noise and more like thoughts. He turns that small fact over in his mind, when he thinks about what Tsunade-sama will say to him about messing up and killing the spy they were suppose to be feeding information to.

_Too young for chuunin_, that's what she'd say to him, never mind Nara was almost a full year younger, which is not as bad as his uncle'd say to him. _You're not your father's son_, That's what he'd say.

But he'd seen the knife in hand; he'd seen it inching out of his sleeve as the man had stalked toward his little cousin, who'd been too busy playing the engiuene for this man, to notice before she'd almost been killed. _He_ should have been watchful enough for two. _He_ should have stopped him some other way, been faster, better, more efficient than he was.

Dead men don't talk, after all. What a screw-up of a mission.

Neji is busy making a list of each sign he'd overlooked, so he'd have it all clear for the mission report when he looks back up and sees her. Hinata is looking at him, very still in a festival kimono, all pinks and golds, looking so lovely he thought his heart might break.

Now when did that happen? Sometime before he killed for her, of that he's sure, but he always thought he'd know, know sometime before the actual killing, that he'd be willing to kill for somebody, but it just kind of…. Happened.

A hair falls out across her cheek. She's been growing it out for months now. It was just long enough to actually do something with, when they'd been given this undercover assignment. Apparently, the spy-turned-traitor-turned-corpse had had a thing about girls like Hinata- young, fragile looking, shy. That's why she'd ended up down this alley, hair piled high and kimono hampering her ability to run. Neji was only here because Maito Gai wanted to see if he could actually work with his cousin without trying to kill her.

What was the opposite of killing someone? Oh, yeah. Killing _for _them.

Or something like that.

Bu the hair's still hanging there, and she's biting her lip, looking uncertain. A streak of blood trails after his fingers, when he reaches out to push the hair back.

"H-he was our contact, but he wanted t-to kill me!" she says. A look of failure, of realization of failure, has settled on to her face. His face probably looks the same.

"Counter-spy," he guesses. His voice, in a surprise twist, manages to come out steady and sure, like he'd wanted it to.

"I-I didn't see the knife at first. T-thank you, Nii-san."

_Nii-san_. Right. Right. What had he been thinking?

"We need to d-dispose of t-the body."

She sinks down, not waiting for his reply, and begins to remove any identifiers from the corpse. There's a hait-ai in his pocket and a distinctive tattoo on his forearm that she methodically cuts into. Neji watches the scene unfold disengaged, like he was an audience member at a play. Blood strains her hands and the hems of her sleeves, but amazingly nothing else. Morning will come and any officials this backwater town might have will find one corpse but no traces leading back to them.

They return home with little said between them, and Hinata insists on writing the report, which must have been kinder to him than he deserved because neither the Godaime nor his uncle have much to say about this latest failure. He finds himself more and more on the guard duty rosters for Hinata, and, after several weeks of this, he finally get up enough guts to ask her if she doesn't get sick of him sometimes. He means it as a joke, but she takes it seriously when she answers in that whispering-light tone of hers.

"N-no, Nii-san. I know y-you care for me."

_Care for._ Those were not perhaps the words he would have used. _Kill for_, maybe. But he says nothing. He is her_ nii-san, _after all, or that is how she looks at him. And if he is still welcome in this place he most desired to be, this place beside her that he didn't even realize he _wanted_ to be, than he would welcome any ignorance and not even fear too much what the next death might bring.


End file.
